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“My prize for the What’s Your Ritual Samovar contest came last night! I’m not sure if it was an error or if they decided to be extra generous, but they sent me Yunnan Golden Buds. Oh my...”
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“I got one of those $3 samplers from Samovar. And what is frustrating about those samples are the size: they are soo tiny so only one shot to try it. In my inexperienced view, I am not sure how I...”
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27 Tasting Notes

I’m enchanted by the look of this tea, both in its dry leaf and liquid forms. The leaves are long, thin and twisty, and very, very golden in color. Never seen anything quite like it before. The aroma is very light, just a little sweet and caramel note.

It looks like others have gone two ways on steeping this up: either 175 or boiling. I went for 175 because it felt like this was a good tea for erring on the side of caution. The resulting liquor is a beautiful dark honey color, with a corresponding sweet smell.

Flavor – at first I’m surprised by how subtle it is. With comparisons to other teas that exhibit sugar/caramel/sweet potato flavors, I was expecting big leaps in those directions, and instead got baby steps. Still there, make no mistake – I can taste the burnt sugar and earthy elements, but it’s all scaled back to a much lower volume. Once I get used to that, I really enjoy this tea and understand the devotion others feel towards it!

Preparation

I am going through these samovar samplers so fast. I will be sad once i have no more.

wow. This is so light, and I thought I had almost oversteeped it! Even with skim milk and sugar this tea still is so light, but so absolutely delicious. It has a malty, creamy taste to it. I almost wish there was more flavor to it. But as a softer black tea this is so delish!

Preparation

I don’t think I’ve been using enough leaf for this, previously. The Samovar directions are usually very generous for amounts of tea and I’ve been automatically decreasing them. I’m frugal! Today I used a heaping tsp in 8 oz of water. This was delicious. Sweet, and slightly fruity. Very mild but tasty. I didn’t think I liked this particularly before, but suddenly I was craving it, and now I really like it. Weird. I’m on my 4th steep, which is taking it a bit too far, but there are still hints of what I was enjoying.

Preparation

My first Yunnan tea! Very interesting… On first taste it seems like any other black tea, but once you “get to know” it, you realize it’s a little more complicated than that.

I am honestly stunned at the natural flavour that is coming from this tea. I’m not normally one to put any sugar in my teas (especially when it’s the first time I’m tasting it) but this tea tastes like it comes with sugar already!

To be honest, I felt that the complex flavours that this tea has were coming out more and more as the tea got cooler. This is definitely one of those teas that I don’t have to worry about cooling down too much. Very drinkable at room temperature!

Definitely a smooth tea, and definitely one that I will have to keep my eye on when I make my next order from Samovar. Time to go for my second steep and see what happens…

Preparation

I’m having to taste around to explore my new found love of Yunnan. This one’s leafs are a little darker than the one I had before and not as fuzzy, if that’s an OK word to describe tea leafs. The color is really nice, and the taste is good. I think it’s not quite as smooth as the other one I had, but I’m still new with this tea. I’ll try it again later and see if I change my mind. I do like a good round tea though no matter what the type.

Black tea from Yunnan is the most popular kind outside of China. But actually, they only export the medium/low-end type of Yunnan black tea. One of the biggest feature of these tea is they adds lychee and rose when baking the tea leaf. The high end type was planted to contain subtle smell of rose. The smell is not added.